The chairman said that the CDA has decided to step out of the ‘Zone-I’ and launch such residential projects in Zone-IV from the encouragement that it has received from the decision by the Supreme Court which clearly stated that the CDA can not prevent the owners of the land from construction activities until and unless it has acquired the land and paid the compensation in full to the owners.

He said that in the light of the Supreme Court’s decision, a summary was moved which was eventually approved by the government and this ‘Park Enclave’ is going to be only the first of many such housing schemes that the CDA is planning to launch in Zone-IV of Islamabad. “Prime Minister Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani is expected to launch the project within a month’s time. We have already sent a request to the prime minister to inaugurate this project. We hope that the prime minister will accept our request and we will receive the confirmation of date very soon, he said.

However, it is also very evident that the CDA has been finding it difficult to jump the ‘hurdles’ and side step the ‘booby traps’ laid by the ‘qabza mafia’, the ‘land mafia’ and the increasingly over-demanding local land owners who are always coming up with some extraordinary demands for selling their pieces of land and property to the authority. This situation also has nudged the authority to move out and launch this exclusive, ‘gated’ and almost self-sufficient sort of housing project, which is bound to catch the attention people who love to live a lavish lifestyle!

Briefing the media about the project at one of the conference rooms in the Convention Centre, the CDA chairman said that the project is divided into two phases. In Phase-I, there are 700 plots measuring one kanal each will be offered while in Phase-II of the project another 600 plots measuring one kanal each will be offered.

“There will be a most modern and well equipped shopping mall in the ‘Park Enclave’ and we are expecting to generate at least Rs10 billion from the sale of these 1,300 residential and commercial plots in this project. We are contemplating to set Rs10.25 million as the reserve price for the residential plots and the reserve price for the commercial plots will be decided later,” he said.

He said that the project is equipped with ‘state-of-the-art’ facilities and is first of its kind being introduced by the CDA in Zone-IV. The Islamabad city is divided into five zones. The total area of the city is 906 sq.kms. Out of the five zones of the city, zone-IV is the one covering the largest area of the whole of federal capital, spread over about 70,000 acres.

The CDA chairman said that only 40 per cent of the land in this project will be used to create plots while rest of the 60 per cent will be used for roads, green areas and other amenities.

The Supreme Court of Pakistan has allowed housing in Zone-IV, which led the CDA to prepare a plan, further dividing the Zone-IV in sub-zones, for different land usage. However, even after the announcement of Zone-IV regulations, so far no housing project has obtained NOC from CDA. The main concept given in regulations for housing in Zone-IV is to develop modern environmental friendly housing for sustainable development. The Zone-IV provide a suburban green field environment for its residents and CDA intend to provide them modern civic facilities while they enjoy natural beauty of open greens and clean air, the CDA chairman said.

He said that the ‘Park Enclave’ is ideally located as it is only about 4 km from Islamabad Club and is located at the intersection of two 600 feet wide roads. It is conveniently accessible from all major roads such as Kashmir Highway, Park Road, Lehtrar Road, Kuri Road & Islamabad Highway, he added.

He said that the CDA will provide 8-10 different designs for construction of houses in the ‘Park Enclave’, which would be based on ‘Eco Architecture’. The proposed designs of the housing units would have low energy footprint incorporating the contemporary green building concept, he added.

The chairman said that the ‘CDA facilitation office’ will not be a typical enquiry office but will act as a consultation and facilitation office where ‘specifications’ and ‘BOQ’ for the houses will be available which will help in supply chain of building material and avoid piling up of heaps of construction material.

The project will be equipped with a modern call centre for recording complaints and enquires for further transmission to engineering staff for implementation. Necessary sheets for steel cutting and mixing mortar shall also be provided to the allottees to avoid road damage and for environmental control, he said.